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Monthly Archives: October 2012

Really. Who can resist what believers are up against? After all, in an increasingly secularized society, we are inundated with the message of materialism. And in that message, secular materialism tells us that all of reality is made only of material — of stuff. It says that there is no spirit, no soul, no final everlasting meaning or purpose to our brief lives.

Moreover, we are told that to believe in God is at best unreasoning foolishness, and at worst, something far more sinister. We are told that religion causes wars, that the Bible is but a myth, and that there is no scientific basis for belief in God.

Faced with that constant drumbeat, who could possibly believe in God? Even the most devout believer must now and again doubt. He must now and again ask, why can’t I see God? Why is there suffering in this world? Why would a just God permit injustice?

Faced with such pervasive secular influence, even the most devout believer must question whether the Red Sea could ever have been miraculously parted, and whether Jesus could really have risen from the dead. Surely, such things cannot happen, can they?

But if one considers all the available physical evidence, and if one follows logic to its final conclusion, then he is left with no reasonable alternative other than to believe that God is real, and that we are fundamentally spiritual beings occupying physical flesh.

If you doubt this, you can easily demonstrate to yourself that you have a distinctly spiritual dimension. You can simply find a quiet place, close your eyes, and perceive yourself. In doing so, you will detect that you are not merely an assemblage of lifeless atoms. You are something more, something that no material explanation can ever satisfy.

If you still doubt, then gaze upon your favorite color, or listen to your favorite musical piece. Material descriptions of these, descriptions of wavelength and amplitude, do not even begin to establish a physical basis for the color or music that you experience. There must be something more to reality than merely the physical.

If you still doubt, then ask yourself whether you act freely of your own volition (free will), or whether everything you think, do and say is beyond your control. Are you a puppet on a cosmic string? Purely material explanations of reality leave no room for free will.

And if you believe that you have no free will, then can you blame anyone for their actions? Can you blame anyone for believing other than you do about free will? Without free will, is anyone truly responsible for what they do? Are we all robots?

Materialism holds that nature has no divine creator, that it simply exists with no plan, no purpose, and no inherent meaning. In that view, nature is a blind force acting upon you with complete indifference.

Yet that same unliving nature has supposedly, somehow, endowed you with life, with consciousness, with a sense of plan, purpose and meaning.

Are you beginning to see that it is much more irrational to disbelieve in God than to believe in Him?

But there is so much more to the story. See for yourself, and then decide.